New Mars Agency report card rates Canada’s main retailers

The report provides an apples-to-apples comparison of Canada’s retail media networks, with Amazon leading in most categories.

Retail media is said to be the fastest growing media channel in Canada. Insider Intelligence expects global ad spending to grow 22% this year and 18.5% in 2025, and command 22% of all digital ad outlays worldwide. Spending in Canada is projected to jump 52% to $3.8 billion in the same period to account for 23% of all digital ad dollars. At the same time, Canadian retailers have been building out their capabilities to capture that spending. To provide advertisers with a tool for effective cross-network evaluation, The Mars Agency has released its Retail Media Report Card that assesses Canada’s four main retail networks, Walmart, Amazon, Instacart and Loblaws.

The report evaluates the networks across 67 criteria, grouped into five key performance areas: targeting, measurement and reporting, media opportunities, innovation, and partnership. The scorecard presents a clear view into the relative strength and sophistication of each retailer, allowing brands to easily identify the industry leaders, developing platforms and the networks trailing in key performance areas.

Targeting criteria covers areas such as audience scale, growth, purchase-based targeting, keyword targeting, geo-targeting and behaviourial targeting. In addition, it also looks at whether they offer templated audience segments, customer IP audience, predictive audiences, retargeting, retailer level targeting and clean room/brand audience ingestion.

Amazon ticks all the boxes except for retailer-level targeting. Walmart and Loblaws come second with both of the networks missing three of the criteria. Instacart only ticked two of the boxes.

Looking at campaign measurement and reporting, the ranking again has Amazon at the top, followed by Loblaws, Walmart and Instacart. This category covers 12 criteria including standard media metrics, media mix modeling, viewability/fraud transparency, and sales lift.

Digital media opportunities through the networks including onsite search, offsite search, display, email, mobile app integration and all the social media platforms are also assessed. Loblaws leads in this area with Walmart second and Instagram following. Amazon comes fourth with an offering of just five digital media options. On-location media opportunities is a two-horse race with Loblaws leading Walmart. The in-store media options include streaming audio, digital OOH, sampling, video/TV, POS and digital signage.

The innovation category looks at options such as self-serve onsite search, programmatic, shoppable content, livestream shopping, dynamic creative optimization and loyalty program alignment. Nine criteria are listed and Amazon ticks all the boxes. Partnership opportunities includes nine criteria, again with Amazon leading with eight, followed by Walmart and Loblaws with six each, and Instacart with five boxes ticked.

The report card also delves into advertising and technology of each network including key partners, recent developments and what’s on the horizon for each retailer.